The House Ethics Committee, a panel in that legislative chamber that is responsible for helping essentially police (not in a literal sense) its members, has confirmed that it is further investigating Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), the prominent Trump ally.
The committee’s revelations included a list of specific areas of concern: “Accordingly, the Committee is reviewing allegations pursuant to Committee Rules 14(a)(3) and 18(a) that Representative Gaetz may have: engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.”
The committee’s latest actions follow a widely reported look by the federal Justice Department at Gaetz that ended with no criminal charges for the Congressman. While those other federal authorities pursued their investigation, they asked the committee to hold off on their own work involving Gaetz. According to the Ethics panel, the Justice Department rescinded that request for a deferral of its investigative activities here.
Gaetz — focusing on other areas of the Ethics Committee’s investigation that it says it’s ending — blamed Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican and former Speaker of the House who, when still a Congressman, was a political target for the Florida Republican.
“Instead of working with me to ban Congressional stock trading, the Ethics Committee is now opening new frivolous investigations,” Gaetz complained on X, the site formerly called Twitter. “They are doing this to avoid the obvious fact that every investigation into me ends the same way: my exoneration. This is Soviet. Kevin McCarthy showed them the man, and they are now trying to find the crime. I work for Northwest Floridians who won’t be swayed by this nonsense and McCarthy and his goons know it.” The statement came the day before the Ethics Committee’s newest revelations involving Gaetz.
